Grandma’s Apple Pie Recipe: A Classic Comfort Dessert

Apple pie isn’t just dessert—it’s a little slice of history. This classic apple pie recipe, adapted from Best Recipes for Baking (1907)¹, brings a touch of old-fashioned charm to your kitchen repertoire.

Historical recipes are fun because you have to decode them. Nowadays we’re used to exact measurements and specific instructions, but even 100 years ago you were basically on your own. I think a lot of cookbook writers were under the assumption that their readers had a standard of kitchen education that we don’t get now…

Anyway, I took the original recipe and did my best to convert it to a modern one.

A caveat: I’m not a baking (or cooking) expert and I’m not obsessive enough to bake something 50 times to get it perfectly. This isn’t that type of blog. Rather, think of this recipe more like an historical artifact, an experiment! You get to see the old fashioned apple pie recipe, and the (hopefully coherent) updated version I put together, with footnotes.

If you make the recipe yourself then you’ll have to let me know how it went!

The recipe card has the modernized version, and following that is the original

Recipe: Grandma’s Apple Pie

Step 1: The Crust

Best Recipes for Baking (1907) actually has 3 different crust options, depending on how much butter vs lard you want to use. Modern home bakers don’t use nearly as much lard as historical ones did, so I picked the “Rich Pie Crust” version to share as it ONLY uses butter.

Here’s the original text with the original crust instructions.

Original Instructions:

Sift one teaspoonful baking powder in one pound of flour, rub into this eight ounces of good butter, add a pinch of salt, add enough cold water to make a soft dough, do not work, mix it just as light as you can, just so there is no dry flour left, put in ice box or cold place and let set for an hour or more, it will then be ready to use.

Exciting! Here’s the modernized version:

Modernized Rich Pie Crust Recipe

Ingredients:
(For one 9-inch pie, top and bottom crusts)

• 2 cups + ¾ cup + 1 tbsp (450g) all-purpose flour²
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup or 2 sticks or 8 oz (270g) unsalted butter³
• Pinch of salt
• 4–6 tbsp cold water (roughly)

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Gradually add ice water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together. Handle as little as possible to maintain flakiness.
4. Divide the dough into two discs, wrap in plastic, and chill for at least 1 hour before rolling.

Step 2: The Filling

Best Recipes for Baking (1907) has several versions of apple pie (including an apple custard pie which I’m definitely going to post soon), but I selected the filling for the Sliced Apple Pie as it’s the most classic.

Original Instructions:

Take good sound apples, peel, quarter, and cut out the core, then slice into thin slices. Line your pie pan with your pie dough, fill with the sliced apple, sprinkle over the apples half cup granulated sugar, more or less amount of sugar depending on sourness of apples. Scatter little pieces of butter over it and flavor with the juice of half a lemon, cinnamon or nutmeg, sprinkle with a little flour. For top roll out your dough and cut into strip one inch wide and long enough to reach across the pie, lay across the pie about an inch apart, then lay strips cross the other way in like manner. Put in oven and bake until a light brown, and the apples are done.

Simple, right! Good lord…

Modernized Sliced Apple Filling Recipe

Ingredients:

• 6 cups⁴ peeled and thinly sliced apples (pick a sweeter variety, NOT Granny Smith)
• ½ cup granulated sugar (adjust for sweetness)
• 1 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
• Juice of ½ lemon
• Pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg
• 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
• Optional: 1 beaten egg

Instructions:

1. Line the pie pan with your prepared crust. Fill with the sliced apples.
2. Sprinkle the apples with sugar, lemon juice and spices. Put the butter pieces on top and then a dusting of flour.
3. Roll out the top crust and cut into 1-inch strips. Lay the strips across the pie in a lattice pattern, crimping the edges to seal.
4. Optional: Brush with beaten egg for a glossy finish.
5. Bake in a 375°F (190°C) oven⁵ until the crust is golden brown (about 50-60 minutes) and the filling bubbles through the lattice.

Cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Closing Thoughts

Well, there we have it! A good old-fashioned apple pie the way Grandma would’ve made it.

Have you ever tried baking a recipe from the past? What did you learn? Share your story in the comments—and let me know how your pie turned out. I’d love to hear about it!

---

Recipe Notes

1. Sourced from the Library of Congress. ↩︎
2. According to Google calculator thing, 1lb of all-purpose flour is equivalent to roughly 454g. I then used Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen’s grams to cups converter and got this horror of a measurement. ↩︎
3. Why do we have so many ways to measure butter?? Thanks to Thinlicious for the butter measurement conversion chart which I used here. ↩︎
4. How many apples you’ll need depends on the size of your pie. For a 9 inch pie you’ll need roughly 6-7 apples, according to The Takeout. ↩︎
5. Historically a “hot oven” is actually closer to 400*-450* but mostly nowadays we bake fruit pies at 375* to keep them from overcooking. ↩︎